Nowhere is now in its fifth year as an online “journal of literary travel writing,” a genre defined by the magazine as “narrative with a strong sense of place, character or time.” Porter Fox, himself a travel journalist for two decades, is the founder and editor, and created the magazine because he wanted something “more engaging, authentic, and diverse.” The website is specific about not publishing “reviews of spas or shopping centers” (yet conveniently never mentions the advertisements). You won't find the ten best bars in Cabo here, but you will find travel writing that takes you places—or rather, contemplates place.

Issue 11 is refreshingly emblematic of Nowhere's commitment to what they say they're all about. Many travel magazines say they're different from the rest—more about the journey than the destination—yet come up short. Nowhere's weekly newsletters send fresh content directly to readers, and the online journal is published semi-frequently (the website doesn't date the magazines, nor does it mention how often they're released). Utilizing an online platform makes sense for Nowhere, whose editors write, “the borderless nature of the Internet fits our content and mission perfectly. We are a magazine about the world. We distribute content to the world.

At home in Oregon, I can read Merrill Gilfillan's “Locus Pocus (Bighorns to the West)” and wonder what I'd do if I came across a mummified body in Wyoming. Gilfillan's piece is excerpted from his 1998 book of essays, Chokecherry Places: Essays from the High Plains. Though there is no narrative force in the piece, it's engaging prose, a meditation on place. The prose dips and dives delightfully from Gilfillan's central Wyoming surroundings to explorations, abstractions, and concepts of place:

There are familiar places; remembered places, burnished as driftwood; imagined places; glimpsed, passerine places rootless as petrels; places we can never find again. There are places like stone and places like oil. There are sacred places rising from the sea level, more one-and-only than all the others. There is the birthplace and the home-place, certifiable by the olfactory, and the final resting-place, and all the in-betweens of dovetailed scenery and sweet locus pocus.

Courtney Maum, author of the novel I'm Having So Much Fun Here Without You, also fosters a strong sense of place in her essay “Brittany.” Like Gilfillan's Ameri-centric essay, Maum's writing lacks narrative force, choosing instead to focus on the place itself—in this case, France. The author is spending a month (the month leading up to her first novel's publication) at her mother-in-law's vacation home—devoid of internet connection to the outside world—while her husband edits a film there. Occupying her thoughts without technology, Maum tries to find equivalent metaphors to properly describe French people (“Or maybe they're not children, maybe French people are cats.”), muses on the wind (“The wind here wants to be played with; it never leaves you alone.”), the ever-changing light, and the freedom she finds in routine. The language in Maum's essay is exquisite. Compact descriptions of place are imbued with the author's typical humor, creating a piece that stays with readers, like the snapshots we bring home from trips abroad.

Zeynep Askoy and Jeanine Pfieffer's pieces display the geographical range of Nowhere contributors as well as the wide scope of the magazine's content. Askoy, an arts and culture journalist, writes from a cafe in Istanbul, chronicling the historical ebb and flow of political movements and protests in the city. Pfieffer, an ethnoecologist with San Jose State University in California, pens “A Dissertation on Pit Latrines;” a brilliant list on how to use “the omnipresent pit latrine” while traveling in foreign countries.

Both Askoy and Pfieffer show a depth of understanding and cultural sensitivity in their respective essays; both are rooted in accessible, every day settings, like a cafe and a toilet. Askoy muses on how Istanbul is changing with a tone of steadying seriousness, while Pfieffer portrays how travelers can adapt to both humorous and cringe-worthy bodily functions with prose that doesn't undermine the importance of the discussion. Although very different subject matters, the commonality lies in their strength in prose.

Nowhere defies traditional notions of travel writing while maintaining a conventional voice. Though the magazine casts aside the must-see and must-do instructions in favor of thoughtful and thought-provoking prose, the narratives don't lean into the experimental. Instead, its pages are full of the kind of stories mainstream travel magazines insert as an afterthought, a brief and rare glimpse into the traveler's inner journey reflected through the exterior trip. That's why I was surprised to find three pages of advertisements interspersed in the twelve pages of this issue of Nowhere. That said, the magazine is free to readers. I'll gladly endure a handful of ads if it means I can still read pieces of excellent travel literature that I haven't found elsewhere. My only caveat to readers: you'll wish there were more pages.